Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novels are popular with countless readers all over the world. They are "ripe for feminist interpretation and investigation" because they are "contemporary women's novels" that discuss the everyday lives of women, particularly unmarried women in the West (Whelehan 2004, 38). Imelda Whelehan argues that if the Bridget Jones novels do not "offer a 'true' reflection of contemporary single life for women, they perhaps present its tensions more boldly than ever" (2004, 30). This thesis is a feminist study of the Bridget Jones novels and the film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary, focussing on how discourses of feminism and otherness appear in Fielding's texts and in the film, and how the major women characters use them to interpret their own lives.
Chapter One investigates the ways in which Bridget, Sharon, and Pam Jones understand feminism and employ feminist language in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996). Chapter Two explores how characters who are Other---those who are racially and ethnically different from Bridget, her friends, and her family---create barriers between the white, heterosexual couples in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999). Finally, Chapter Three turns to the 2001 film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary in order to demonstrate how prevalent themes in the first novel, including feminism, go missing in the adaptation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/27125 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Dhrodia, Reshma |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 107 p. |
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